While looking at this node, I saw

  $month=.0.$month;
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and wondered what that leading period was on the number. Is .0 equivalent to 0.0?

  my $s = 'abc';
  $s = .0.$s;
  print $s, "\n";
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yields 0abc, but then I tried:

  my $n = .0;
  print $n, "\n";
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which yields 0D, and so does

  print .0, "\n";
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So the newline character is being converted to its ASCII code. Would someone explain this to me please?